Bras\u00edlia \u2013 The national coordinator of the Brazilian Pastoral Care for Children (Pastoral da Crian\u00e7a), Zilda Arns Neumman, was one of the Brazilian victims of the earthquake that hit the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, yesterday (12). The information was supplied by congresswoman Ideli Salvatti, who visited Pal\u00e1cio do Planalto \u2013 the seat of the Brazilian government today \u2013 (13th) and accompanied the presidential staff\u2019s efforts for gathering information.<\/p>\n
According to her, all of the contacts are being made by the chief of the presidential cabinet, Gilberto Carvalho, who has already spoken to relatives of Zilda\u2019s, including senator Fl\u00e1vio Arns, her nephew. He will travel to Haiti alongside the Brazilian minister of Defence, Nelson Jobim.<\/p>\n
"Apparently, she was on the streets of Port-au-Prince at the time of the quake and was hit by something,\u201d said Ideli Salvatti. At Pal\u00e1cio do Planalto, the president\u2019s ministers and advisors are \u201ctotally\u201d engaged, said Ideli.<\/p>\n
So far, the deaths of four members of the Brazilian military have been confirmed. They were part of the UN Peace Corps operations in the country, which are headed by Brazil.<\/p>\n
Zilda travelled last weekend to attend a missionary meeting at an organization named CIFOR and was staying at the Episcopal headquarters. According to Zilda Arns\u2019 press office, the coordinator was in Haiti to teach the Pastoral Care for Children\u2019s working methods for fighting malnutrition.<\/p>\n
The disappearance of 75-year old Zilda was confirmed to news agency Ag\u00eancia Brasil<\/i> by her son, Rubens Arns. According to him, he last contacted his mother on Saturday (9th).<\/p>\n
The Brazilian president Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva regretted the tragedy that took place yesterday in Haiti and the passing of Zilda. The information was supplied by the Brazilian minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, while leaving a meeting with Lula today in the morning. \u201cThe president is absolutely shocked by the entire situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Regarding the death of Zilda Arns, Amorim claimed that Lula \u201cdeeply lamented\u201d the disappearance of a prominent person in the country who was in Haiti doing humanitarian aid work. Amorim also regretted the news.<\/p>\n
The governor of the state of Paran\u00e1, Roberto Requi\u00e3o, who is now in Bras\u00edlia (the Brazilian capital), declared three days of official mourning in the state for Zilda\u2019s death. Requi\u00e3o stated on Twitter that he has lost a great friend, and that her passing represents a great loss to Brazil and much pain to her friends.<\/p>\n
Zilda Arns Neumann, 75, paediatrician and sanitarian, was the founder and coordinator of Pastoral Care for Children, founder and national coordinator of the Pastoral Care for the Elderly (Pastoral da Pessoa Idosa), both of which are social action organizations of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB).<\/p>\n
She was a honorary representative of the CNBB, of the National Health Council and a member of the Council for Social and Economic Development (CDES). Born in the city of Forquilhinha (in the state of Santa Catarina), she lived in Curitiba (capital of the state of Paran\u00e1), had five sons and ten grandsons. She chose medicine as her mission and dedicated herself to public healthcare.<\/p>\n
In 1980 she was invited to coordinate the Sabin vaccination campaign, for fighting the first polio epidemics, which started in the municipality of Uni\u00e3o da Vit\u00f3ria (Paran\u00e1), and devised her own method, which was later adopted by the Brazilian Ministry of Health.<\/p>\n
In 1983, by request of the CNBB, she established the Pastoral Care for Children alongside Geraldo Majela Agnello, the Cardinal Archbishop of S\u00e3o Salvador da Bahia (capital of the state of Bahia), then the Archbishop of Londrina (Paran\u00e1). It was then that she developed the community-oriented methodology of multiplying knowledge and solidarity among poorer families.<\/p>\n
She used to say that providing education to mothers, by means of qualified community leaders, was the best way to fight most of the easily preventable diseases and to protect children from becoming criminals.<\/p>\n
The Pastoral Care for Children provides assistance to over 1.9 million pregnant women and children under 6 years of age, and 1.4 million impoverished families in 4,063 municipalities in Brazil. There are over 260,000 volunteer workers. The organization\u2019s working method was replicated in several countries.<\/p>\n
For her social work, Zilda Arns was decorated several times. In 2006 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize alongside women from around the world selected by the 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize project, created by a Swiss association. Zilda was the sister of the Archbishop Emeritus of de S\u00e3o Paulo, cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns.<\/p>\n
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The coordinator of the Pastoral Care for Children, which assists poor families in Brazil, fell victim to the quake in the Caribbean country yesterday. She was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-economy"},"wps_subtitle":"The coordinator of the Pastoral Care for Children, which assists poor families in Brazil, fell victim to the quake in the Caribbean country yesterday. She was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}